Political predictions

Periods of political renewal - as Australia is experiencing under Kevin Rudd - occur all too infrequently.

And when voters show the door to those who dominate politics for long periods - as John Howard did from 1996 - the death knell of their respective party is inevitably sounded across the country.

The latest death signals for the conservatives came this week with the release of what appears to be an interesting study of federal voting demographics.

The central theme of the study, by Deakin University lecturers Juliet Pietsch and Aaron Martin, is that long-term voting patterns suit Labor and the minor parties while a failure by the conservatives to reach out to young people will see them become extinct.

Though this type of poll-driven research is sure to get party strategists reaching for the Casio and the political classes chattering, it's hardly an earth shattering revelation.

But its key proposition, that only the Liberal/National Coalition confronts a potential death sentence thanks to Labor and the minor parties, cannot go unchallenged.

One only needs to look at recent political events in Australia and Britain to see that bitter defeat awaits those who fail to renew and replenish their stocks, regardless of their political pedigree.

The NSW Government will be shown the door in 2011 and after 16 years in power will be given a big kick in the pants on the way out.

Kevin Rudd rode an anti-Coalition wave to power because Howard had simply been there too long and became irrational. And, let's not forget the Labor Party had been written off following its fourth election defeat in 2004.

For Howard, longevity was a drug administered with fatal consequences.

The conservatives were seen as the nasty party. Workers rights, young voters believed, were being gobbled up by selfish individualism. And the environment and social justice were poor second cousins to unbridled opportunism and wealth creation that were perceived to be the order of the day.

From where I sat, Howard's end has as much to do with demographics as his rise to power. People wanted change and Kevin Rudd was a fresh face who just so happened to be leader of the Labor Party.

In Britain, a similar chain of events is playing out but this time the ruling Labour Party is on the receiving end.

After four successive electoral defeats and three changes in leadership, the Tories are back, under the leadership of the 40-something David Cameron.

Eton-educated, Oxford graduate and a member of the exclusive Mayfair gentleman's club Whites, which counts Prince Charles and his sons as members, Cameron should fuel antipathy among Britain's mainstream.

You'd think the last person millions of Britain's unemployed would relate to is someone straight out of the establishment's top drawer. In other words, demographics, in a sense, should be Cameron's worst enemy

But like Rudd, Cameron has done a stellar job in crafting an image to suit the times. He talks up social justice and lifestyle issues like "work life balance". He's known to ride a bicycle and has even installed a wind turbine at his home.

The gentler political rhetoric and the olive branch extended to environmentalists are the hallmarks of a remarkable modernisation strategy for Britain's previously reviled Conservative Party.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is seen as colourless and dour - a man who spent the best part of a decade angling for the job of his charismatic predecessor Tony Blair. Cameron, on the other hand, is Britain's Mr Nice Guy, as one political commentator recently described him, making him extremely attractive to swathes of young voters yearning for change.

Both Howard and Brown show that either one of two things happen to those who stay for too long. Rampant ideology, and a certain level of arrogance, engulfed rational political thinking as in Howard's case. Or you simply become boring and tired as in Brown's case.

It is right to suggest Australia's conservative parties risk long term electoral oblivion if they fail to establish greater appeal among younger voters as the Deakin hypothesis suggests.

But it's entirely wrong to pin the extinction tag on a single political party. And the claim the minor parties represent a significant threat doesn't stack up when there are fewer legitimate minor parties federally than there were five years ago.